Tales of Maj'Eyal 1.5 Beta!

[Mordy]

Playing beta3, Mind Whip just doesn't work at all and causes a lua error saying that gotLos is nil.

Side note : it'd be neat if the error dialog box allowed you to put the error in the clipboard

[themuffinthief]

You also highly overestimate how bad it is to play melee.

4 of my 5 insane winners were melee (Sun Paladin, Stone warden, Doombringer, Shadowblade vs Alchemist). I play primarily melee. I still think ranged classes are far easier to play, I just get bored of them too easily.

[ster]

did archmage really need buffing

[Zizzo]

Found a problem with the new 'UseTalents:use' hook, or else I'm misunderstanding its proper use: the 'b.what' field that you're branching on in the Dialog:listPopup() callback isn't passed through to the hook ['item' in this scope is the parameter passed into _M:use()], so the hook has no way of knowing which entry was selected. I think we need something akin to the 'data.act' field passed into 'UseItemMenu:use'.

[jenx]

Yeah defense is fundamentally bad on higher diffs as bosses just get too much acc. I'd buff TR instead or maybe give crit reduction or something.

Not always. They can get 130+ accuracy on madness. But i can get close to that on adventurer, if you choose talents that give % increase.

[ster]

The real issue with buffing player defense is that it makes enemy defense that much better.

[themuffinthief]

did archmage really need buffing

What got buffed on archmage? I must have missed it

[Micbran]

Stone Skin now has a chance to reduce a random talent's cooldown when hit in melee


There you go.

[darthsawyer]

Stone Skin now has a chance to reduce a random talent's cooldown when hit in melee

It only can reduce the cooldown of a random spell from the Earth or Stone tree once per turn by 2 seconds. Not any talent.

Thanks for implementing my suggestion DarkGod!
Slight typo: "Each time you are hit in melee you have [%] chances to reduce..." should be "Each time you are hit in melee you have a [%] chance to reduce..."

did archmage really need buffing

Earth/Stone archmages are by far the weakest out of all specializations, this is only a minor buff to them not archmages as a whole. Nobody ever put 5 points into stone skin before, now there is a reason to.

[Number43]

As for buffing archmages, I'm always seeing people say their fire and arcane trees are far superior choices to their other elements, and that should be addressed somehow.

[Mex]

Your reasoning for the buff is flawed. You forget that if you don't go stone you can just use this to decrease the stone wall cd only which is really op. You just buffed wildfire more than stone so good job.

[Pisastrish]

Looks like item set switching on possessors is basically working now, although the talents in battle psionics show up as unavailable when you don't have 2 mindstars in your current set (they still work, just a graphical thing). I get an error every time I cast mind whip on an enemy though
Edit: to be clear I ONLY get the error casting it on enemies, it works fine on myself/friendlies/empty space

[Patashu]

Your reasoning for the buff is flawed. You forget that if you don't go stone you can just use this to decrease the stone wall cd only which is really op. You just buffed wildfire more than stone so good job.

Maybe it could be fixed by making it only reduce the cooldown of talents in the Stone category?

[voltteccer]

'Cause it's expensive and you can pretty often get more bang for that buck if you kick it on after you've stuck some debuffs on whatever you're trying to kill? Opening with it can be a bit wasteful, at times.

Applying debuffs is the MOST IMPORTANT time to have have high attack speed, because the most dangerous time to fight enemies is before you apply your debuffs. After you've already applied your debuffs attack speed becomes less important because obviously it won't speed up the cooldowns.

And even if Trueshot only gave like 10% I would still open most fights with it because if stamina runs out it just forces you to regroup which is boring and annoying but not harmful in any way.

- I disagree that Concealment is actually bad. It's a Leaves Tide with 3/10 uptime base (you're prob averaging about 44% chance) that you can reapply with other talents. Inferior to Agility maybe, but saying it 'sucks' is wrong. Even if you ignore the range/vision entirely it's got that + a free 200% extra damage on your next Steady Shot.

I'll grant I was harsh on the defensive buff which is big but short. The offense aspects I think are gimmicky at best.

- New Archer straight up has more stamina regen and less costs nearly across the board vs old Archer, not counting TR/Sentinel which is a separate issue. Even Called Shots is only +5 stamina more, not double - and it hits much harder.

Old Archer was able to put out more damage to a group of targets than new Archer given the same time and stamina, due to things like 160+% damage on Dual Arrow/Scatter Shot, and the ability to consistently hit large numbers of targets with Piercing Arrow, Volley of Arrows, and Scatter Shot. Additionally old Archer had Relaxed Shot, which isn't great but means that new Archer only pulls ahead in stamina in longer 1v1 fights.

So this makes it kinda hard to exactly understand the 'archer is now skirmisher' comment, as I don't think they have lost as much AoE/debuff power as you said.

Avoiding arguing about all the details, the playstyle is what I'm really driving at. Old Archer functioned best by carefully choosing when and where to use each of the different shots to maximize their individual and overall effectiveness. Almost any of the shots could be decisive if used at the right time in the right way, and stamina management was largely about thinking ahead to avoid unnecessary expenditures. You would regularly reposition, especially while enemies were pinned/slowed/stunned, in order to ensure that you would stay in a strong position to maximize your talents.

Skirmisher on the other hand pretty much just sits in place cycling through called shots and using Bash and Smash or Tumble when the current position is threatened. Two of your 3 attacks have decent debuffs attached to them, but debuffing the enemy doesn't change your decision procedure: you still just choose between A) spamming more called shots and B) repositioning to a better spot to spam more called shots. It's one of the more brainless classes in the game, up with the likes of Sawbutcher. It's also really really unfun to fight large groups, if you don't get what I mean here, fight a clear brittle ooze as a Skirmisher some time.

In case it isn't obvious from my descriptions, I love the first style and hate the second. New Archer falls on the Skirmisher side, though it isn't as braindead thanks to stuff like Escape and the fact that it does at least have some AOE ability. Also Bull Shot and Vault add some much needed movement when Skirmisher would otherwise happily stand still for dozens of turns on end. If this rework had replaced Skirmisher instead of replacing Archer I would be less upset, especially since in the beta Skirmisher is a big useless appendix that has no reason to even exist (and it is actually weaker than it was in 1.4.9, because now it has to choose 1 of armor/TR instead of getting both).

Is Escape super OP? I mean, Archer had a real lack of defensive CDs before that weren't infusions or debuffing stuff into oblivion. I guess I could fixed_cd it to not buff Shalore yet again though. Maybe just upping the CD a bit as 20 is kinda short.

I wouldn't say "super OP", but in a vacuum devoid of context it is almost certainly the best single talent in the game, since movement infusion was already arguably the best talent, and Escape is a movement infusion that also grants >50% resall and doesn't break when you do things like activate regen infusion and also doesn't use an inscription slot. It is a bit much, but new Archer still has weak defenses apart from Escape, so it is very low on my list of complaints.

Sentinel being so incredibly good that 'use Sentinel+only Steady/Headshot' beats 'actually use your talents as intended'. I love the concept, but maybe just upping the cooldown so it's not spammable and then giving Archer some debuff power back would be best.

The two problems with Sentinel are A) when fighting something dangerous, it is usually optimal to use Sentinel on any given turn if possible and B) it is available every 4 turns. One problem is easy to fix, the other is hard to fix.

[darthsawyer]

Your reasoning for the buff is flawed. You forget that if you don't go stone you can just use this to decrease the stone wall cd only which is really op. You just buffed wildfire more than stone so good job.

In order to reduce stonewall cooldown you need to A: have it on cooldown and B: be getting hit in melee. You do not want to get hit in melee as a wildfire archmage. Furthermore, it only reduces it by 2 once a turn and stonewall has an enormous cooldown. Trash is going to die instantly, so the only time this applies is in boss battles. You are probably dead if you are just letting some boss beat the shit out of you for 14 turns. Secondly, 5 > 1. Indirectly buffing stonewall in an edgecase for wildfire is in no way more significant than buffing the 5 earth and stone spells it affects, which is amplified by Body of Stone. Rather than trying to nerf the worst archmage specialization because it might reduce stonewall cooldown by 2 turns once in a blue moon, consider nerfing the specialization that apparently makes such a minor buff a problem.